Right before that last hot spell, I took a little time to begin training Smoke Jumper for carting. He had no problems at all with the harness or walking with all that hardware and dangling lines. He is a very smart and calm gentleman and willing to try something new! We did have several minutes of confusion on both our parts when I first tried to “ground drive” him from behind. Normally this is a two-person job, but I had to try it alone. Still I was impressed that Smoky seemed to respond to the reins quite well in a short period.
After a couple more workouts, and Fred’s help, we were walking Smoky in the cart, and took a few photos. He is only just starting his training and we are certainly not ready to go solo, but already I can understand how addictive this activity can be!
Fred’s travel late this summer is taking so much time that we will probably skip a couple of shows that we had planned on attending. Hopefully those extra weekends will give us a little time to work with Smoky and perhaps bring along a couple other cart trainees. Rocko and Spot stand watching the activity from their fence, and I think they might enjoy the chance for an outing too!
Daily Archives: 2 August, 2005
I see on my Farmer’s Almanac calendar that the Dog Days of Summer are supposed to end on August 11. That will be good news, if it is true! After sitting in the muggy remnants of hurricane Dennis for over a week during mid July, the swampy but cloudy weather became sunny and dangerously hot the last week of July. We hurried to get the two big swamp coolers running, neither of which had the water hooked up at all last summer. Of course that meant two new sump pumps, and when Lowes no longer carried the kind we have been using, it also meant an extra trip for new hose fittings. You know how it goes with farm repairs. The swamp coolers are not as effective here in the midwest with our humidity, but when the temperature hit 96, the relative humidity was only in the low 50% range. That provided a good 10 degree temperature depression. This week we are aiming for the 90’s again, but with dewpoints not supposed to exceed 70, the swamp coolers will provide some nice cooling during the mid day. The water pumps are on timers, and the monster fans on all the time, so I hope to not have to hose down any llamas during this week’s heat wave. We hit almost 110 heat index last Monday, and I hope all the llamas and other livestock in our area made it through. We have heard of some heat stress conditions, but so far nothing too serious. Keep those fans running!
Generally during this time of year I spend these hot afternoons indoors working on the web site. Somehow, other things keep interfering. Parts of our site are in need of updating, and I promise to get that done soon, so please check back for new photos, new babies, and new yarns!